YQrtw: Why Hong Kong

Hong Kong. Panorama of the harbour, Old timey Hong Kong

Today is the end of my stream of posts of countries I am visiting while on my round-the-world (RTW) trip.

The last stop of RTW is Hong Kong!

Confession: I’ve not been to Hong Kong. [Insert surprised gasp from the audience here.]

In Singapore, Hong Kong, along with Bangkok, seems to be taken for granted as a place everyone has been to. Not sure why these two locations are so popular among Singaporeans.

While I’ve not been to Hong Kong, I have been to Macao. Many people tell me that having been to Macao does not make up for not having been to Hong Kong.

My plan for Hong Kong is simple: Rest, shop and eat.

Since Hong Kong will be my first East Asian stop after many months, I will probably gorge myself with loads of Chinese food. YUMMY!

I was thinking of visiting Tim Ho Wan, dubbed the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world, but after reading The Telegraph article about how horrendous the queue is, I think I’ll pass.

I’ll settle for a regular ole dim sum place and Hong Kong cafe where they serve cheese baked rice and milk tea.

Any Hong Kong eating tips for me?

YQrtw: Why South America, Central America

Out of all the places I am going to on my round-the-world (RTW) trip, South America and Central America are least familiar to me.

For me, South America’s allure is its mystery and affordability. (Sort of what western tourists think about South East Asia.)

I’ve wanted to visit the continent but never did because it’s expensive to get there for no reason. Since I’m doing a RTW, I might as well visit South America along the way. Besides that, South America is most likely cheaper than Europe or the United States.

I have only 2 months in South America. That’s very little time so I won’t be visiting some countries.

For example, I won’t go to Brazil because they speak Portuguese there. (A rather strange reason but I want to practice Spanish and not get muddled up.)

I’ve put Central America into the blog title, but I’m only visiting El Salvador. My flight from Lima to Los Angeles had a stopover at San Salvador so I requested an extra 7 days there.

Argentina

National Capital at Buenos Aires, — old timey buenos aires

Credit: OSU Special Collections & Archives : Commons

I stop at Buenos Aires after a transit at Dubai airport from Istanbul (yes, the connection is terrible). I don’t plan to spend too much time in the capital because I’ve heard that things can be as expensive as the US or Europe.

I want to be able to speak Spanish so I might take a week or so of lessons here. I’ve read that Argentinian Spanish is very different from the rest of the Latin American countries but it would be quite cool to speak differently from others.

From Buenos Aires, I plan to head to Iguazu Falls to see the magnificent waterfalls. I’m thinking if I should take the chance to step into Brazil and Paraguay since they are near the falls.

Bolivia

Mountain gorge near La Paz, Bolivia
Photo credit: Smithsonian Institution Archives

I didn’t know of Bolivia until I started reading up on South America. I fell in love with the name Bolivia and want to visit the place very much.

Another reason I want to visit here is because I’ve heard that living expenses here is really really cheap. If I can handle the high altitude, I might even take Spanish classes (if I haven’t done so in Argentina).

[Side note, while in search of La Paz, I found a photo of this posed skeleton.]

Peru

Credit: Epsilon31

Can you go to South America without heading to Peru? (Well, technically yes but my plane leaves from Peru so I must be there.)

Top on my list for Peru is MACHU PICCHU!!!!!! OMGWTFBBQ!!! I haven’t made any bookings for the site. I wonder if I will be able to get into the place when I am there.

El Salvador

I have a week in El Salvador to recover from my 2-months in South America. Since my flight from Lima has to make a stop in San Salvador, I requested Airtreks to let me extend a week here for an extra US$60.

I have no plans for San Salvador but I will probably stay in the country for the whole week despite it being the smallest country in Central America. (It might even feel like Singapore without the tall buildings, great public transport and airconditioned malls.)

What tips do you have for South and Central Americas?

YQrtw: Why turkey

Interior of St. Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey, 1914 Hagia sophia

We’re almost at the end of YQrtw Europe edition. My last stop in the continent is Turkey and I will head to South America afterwards.

Credit: Brooklyn Museum

I’m glad that Airtreks suggested I add Istanbul as a stop because I didn’t realize how wonderful the country is. Just the photo of Hagia Sophia (picture above) has convinced me to see Istanbul.

Mom will be joining me in Istanbul so that makes it even more exciting. My mom’s never been out of Asia before and it’ll be quite a culture shock to send her straight from Malaysia to Turkey.

While mom’s quite open to adventure, she has told me that the hamam (Turkish bath) is a big NO. I replied, “But mom, you’ve went to the onsen in Japan before.” Turns out, for mom, not wearing anything in a public bath is still ok but getting scrubbed by another person is not.

Aside from Istanbul, we will head to Cappadocia for the cave hotels. I want to bring mom to take a hot air balloon ride. The recent hot air balloon crash has made my father nervous about the rides but he doesn’t have to know if we don’t tell. ;)

Have you been to Turkey? Any travel tips?

YQrtw: Why Greece

[We’re back on schedule with my round-the-world warm up posts thanks to my mom’s mobile broadband.]

Today, we’re going to visit Greece and say “Hi!” to all my patron gods and goddesses.

Image credit: Brooklyn Museum Archives

Greece was no. 1 on my list of countries to visit ever since I watched Disney’s Hercules: The Animated Series. That’s why I listed Greece as a must-visit when I planned my RTW.

I will land in Athens after an EasyJet flight from Rome. I plan to spend most of my time in the capital before making my way over land to Istanbul.

I want to visit Acropolis Museum and the other Greek ruins. I will also make a pilgrimage to the Parthenon to visit Athena’s temple.

Apart from the museum and the temple, I’m pretty much plan-less so I will read more on Athens when I travel.

I’m glad I’m going to Athens after the Olympic Games because this means that the public transportation has been upgraded.

I love train rides so I am excited to take the Athens to Thessaloniki route. But I’m kind of disappointed that the overnight train to Turkey has been cancelled.

Have you been to Greece? Any visit tips to share?

YQrtw: Why a repositioning cruise

We’re sort of back on schedule with my daily round-the-world (RTW) posts.

Today, we are talking about my 15-night repositioning cruise from Dubai to Europe.

Image credit: Australian National Maritime Museum

The cruise was the first booking I made for my RTW. After paying the deposit, I felt that the RTW was going to come true. It also helped with choosing travelling dates for the rest of my trip.

I planned to cross either the Atlantic or Pacific ocean on a cargo ship but the price wasn’t cheap enough.

In the end, I found out about repositioning cruises which are ships that travel during off-peak season back to popular starting points.

Pros and cons of a repositioning cruise

Pros

Cheaper per night than the usual cruise
Long sailing period (so much water! and sunsets on the ocean)
One-way (so I do not need to backtrack)
Full of retirees (so I don’t have to see party animals)
Unlimited food (vs cargos with three meals)
Stops at a few important locations (one-day excursion!)

Cons

Large one-time payment
Long sailing period (with few stops at shores)
Full of retirees (who have the time to travel on a long stretch of time)
Expensive (not the usual price of a budget flight and not recommended if you are on a round-trip journey)
High single surcharge (vs budget flights)
Short stays at shore

Cost of repositioning cruise

When I made the booking for the cruise from Dubai to Italy, my booking charge was around S$2,000. I felt it was a reasonable price since it included transportation and lodging.

I paid the final fees in early February. However, I was shocked when I did a search and found out that the type of room I booked for was going at an even cheaper rate.

My friend advised me to call up the cruise company and tell them that I am upset about the price difference. I did make and call and was surprised when the operator told me they would refund the difference.

The refund turned out to be S$599.75 which is a really hefty sum and could help me with many nights in a cheap location.

I still need to pay about S$200 of tips for the whole trip but I haven’t made the payment yet.

While I’m very excited about the cruise, two of my friends who have been on cruises told me that it is actually really really boring. Gulp! I guess I’ll have to find out myself.

Have you been on a cruise? How was the experience? Will I be bored out of my mind?

YQrtw: Why Dubai

[It’s supposed to be a week full of posts about my round-the-world but I do not have fixed internet connection at home so I will update a little sparsely.]

Today, we are talking about Dubai which I didn’t plan to visit but ended up on my list anyway.

Photo credit: Eugene Kaspersky (The Kaspersky!)

Dubai wasn’t originally on my list of places to visit. From descriptions of the place, I imagined it to be like a faster growing Singapore with the occasional sand storm.

However, I suspected that I might have a layover there since it’s a transit hub.

In the end, I did get a few days in Dubai but not for flight transit as I first thought. Instead, my cruise leaves from Dubai.

When buying my ticket to Dubai from Colombo, I gave myself 3 full days in the city which stretches out into 4 days if you look at the calendar. Now I’m kind of regretting having such a long layover there.

However, Stephanie from Pearlsnpassport.com who was in Dubai recently loved the place and would consider working there. I met up with her just this afternoon for a lunch of ayam penyet. She helped with a lot of questions

[Stephanie is now on her RTW and her first two stops were Dubai and Sri Lanka. She helped me with a lot of questions about travelling in Dubai and Sri Lanka. It’s my first time seeing an actual RTW-er and a fellow travel blogger.]

I’ll give Dubai a chance and won’t judge the place until I’ve been there. If things aren’t as fun (meaning I only visit shopping malls), I might head over to Oman since I do not need a visa there.

Do you have any travel tips for Dubai? Share them in the comments below.

YQrtw: Why Sri Lanka

Welcome to a week full of posts to get you (and I) excited about my RTW. Today, we are talking about Sri Lanka but mostly about how I almost skipped Ceylon.

Colombo, Ceylon [Source: The National Archives]

In my original plans, I wanted to visit India. It wasn’t because I was particularly enamoured with India. It was because India is a staple of a modern RTW and I wanted to be hip (but not a hippy).

Later, I crossed India off the list because I was required to pay 161.56 ringgit in visa fees. Yucks.

Luckily, AirAsia started promoting its Kuala Lumpur-Colombo (Sri Lanka) route. [This route was later cancelled, I’ll talk more about it later.] I figured that Sri Lanka is a good beginner’s guide to South Asia. I booked a dirt cheap ticket to Sri Lanka and planned to stay there for two weeks.

I didn’t do much planning for Sri Lanka. My usual travel buddy D also bought tickets to Sri Lanka and I planned to steal her itinerary. D happily planned her trip while I happily not plan my trip.

Then, we received bad news.

AirAsia cancels KUL-CMB

In February, AirAsia cancelled the Kuala Lumpur-Colombo route. It was a total WTF moment because I’ve seen AirAsia promote Sri Lanka like crazy. Every time I got my hands on its in-flight magazine, I had seen Sri Lanka featured.

What am I supposed to do?

Unfortunately, by that time, I’ve already booked my tickets from Colombo to Dubai. It would be too expensive for me to get a flight direct to Dubai from Malaysia.

I did worry a lot about my flight. I tried searching for cheaper tickets but all full service carriers were too expensive. The best ticket I could get was Tiger Air flight from Singapore but the 10pm arrival time was horrid.

Even if I wanted to make a booking from mid-February to early-March, I didn’t because of Mercury retrograde. Yes, I am very superstitious and did not want to make any bookings during the “horoscopely bad” period.

Things worked out in the end. By the tail-end of the Mercury retrograde period, I found out that Tiger Air changed their timing for the Sri Lanka flight to morning. I booked the 10am flight to Colombo and will reach at 11am in the morning. That’s a great timing.

Things to do in Sri Lanka

I still haven’t done a lot of research on Sri Lanka. I’ve heard only good things about the place from people who have visited: tea, curry, relaxation.

I do have vague plans such as taking the train, visiting Buddha’s tooth and avoid getting bitten by mosquitos.

By the way, I will be in Sri Lanka during their new year. My Sri Lankan friend, M, said most shops are closed then but the temples are open. It would be fun seeing how they celebrate new year there and how it differs from my Malaysian Chinese New Year.

I wonder how much I can wing it. Maybe I will do more reading once I head home on Tuesday.

Sri Lanka, here I come!

Do you have any travel tips for Sri Lanka? Share them in the comments below.

(Tomorrow I will be talking about my 15-night cruise that only costs about S$1,700 with tips.)

YQrtw: Round-the-world pre-trip expenses

Get ready for an overload of posts on my round-the-world (RTW) trip the whole week [#YQrtw](minus Friday where I will be sharing food from my East Coast trip). During the week, I’ll be writing about the destinations I am going to and a special post on cruising.

Today, I will be talking about my pre-trip expenses.

Receipt for “Confederate States Court” Upholstery, 12/1861
Photo credit: National Archives at Fort Worth, TX.

The most frequent question I get from people when I tell them about my round-the-world (RTW) trip is: “So, how much will your trip cost?”

I look sheepishly back at them, “I’m not sure.”

“How much are you saving?”

“I’m thinking S$10,000 but I’m not sure.”

So, to be open about my expenses, I will share the cost of RTW.

Since I’ve not been on the trip yet, I’ll list down my pre-travel expenses.

To be honest, I was a little shocked when I saw how much I’ve spent even before leaving. However, this also means that I will have less in-trip expenses (is that even a word?)

I also want to note that I have paid for everything myself. My parents do not have a trust fund for me and they are not paying for the trip (at least not yet. haha).

Let’s get back to the topic: Here is the spreadsheet of expenses and detailed explanation of each price.

Air tickets (Total: S$4,436.10)

Air tickets took up more than half of my pre-trip expenses (~60 percent). I have a split of budget airlines and full-service airlines.

For my budget flights, I booked them myself through the airlines’ website (AirAsia, Tiger Air and Easyjet).

For the rest of the flights, I didn’t get one of those RTW tickets sold by airlines. The first time I tried cobbling up a route, I was very shocked about the price. I sort of gave up on it in the end.

Instead, I booked the flights though Airtreks which specializes in multi-destination flight routes. I did a mock booking and sent my purchase query to the company. Later, an agent (mine’s Justin) set up a time to call me so we can book the tickets together.

One good thing about using Airtreks instead of looking on my own was that I didn’t need to look at different routes on my own. Also, I wouldn’t have known about South American airline TICA if I had booked on my own. I managed to add in a week in El Salvador since Justin told me there was a layover there (US$60 extra).

After my booking, Airtreks also sent me e-mail updates on some of the flight timing changes which was a nice touch. Another great thing that happened with Airtreks was that they had an offer of either a night in a fancy hotel or US$100 Amazon vouchers (I chose Amazon!).

The down side was that the tickets were about US$400 more than what it would have been if I booked them separately on my own. Of course, if I booked the flights on my own, I would have to religiously check if there are any flight changes.

Even though the flights are pretty expensive, it’s actually about the same as a Singapore-Brazil roundtrip flight (according to people who told me about it).

Cruise (S$1429.9)

Before you go “What on earth, you are taking a cruise? Are you old or something?!”, I want to tell you that I will have a separate post on why I chose the 15-night repositioning cruise during my RTW.

This time, I want to talk about the expenses. This cruise to Italy wasn’t my first booking with Royal Caribbean.I made another booking for Dubai to Barcelona since the Italy route wasn’t open when I first booked.

I found out about the Italy cruise later and cancelled Barcelona to buy the new cruise. Even though I had to forfeit S$100 of my deposit, I still managed to save S$50 because it was slightly cheaper.

I paid for the full ticket in February (S$2,030). However, I found out that the price for the cabin of my class had dropped significantly in March. I think it’s because the cruise had very low booking and they had to slash the price to about S$1,500 per person.

I was rather angry. My friends advised me to call up the cruise line to complain. I did and I managed to get a verbal agreement that they will refund me the price difference. (I asked for an e-mail update but I haven’t received it yet.)

The cruise does seem expensive. S$1,500. However, you must remember that it’s for 15 nights of accommodation and all-you-can-eat buffets. Plus, it stops in Egypt which would cost quite a lot if I had decided to fly in and out to visit the pyramids.

I still need to include the tips which will probably be around S$200 for the trip.

Insurance (S$582.00)

I bought a 22-week insurance from Chartis during the Natas Travel Fair. It was 40 percent off which was a very good offer.

I did consider getting World Nomads (which is popular among the long-term travellers) but I decided that I want someone in Singapore whom I can talk to in case (touch wood) anything bad happens.

Yellow fever vaccine (S$188)

I still have a few vaccines I need for the trip but I decided to get the yellow fever vaccine in Singapore, just in case they didn’t have any in Sabah.

I went to Singapore General Hospital’s Travel Clinic. Even though I told the nurse that I only wanted the yellow fever vaccine, she gave very detailed explanation about what other shots I will need. She also checked if I needed to bring any malaria tablets. She figured that if I skip a few of the high-risk areas, I wouldn’t need any tablets.

She also advised me to cover myself up with long sleeves and trousers. I also need to use repellent with high DEET. Gulp.

The other vaccines I need are Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Typhiod, rabies. I’ll probably skip rabies and refrain from touching the cute cats on the trip.

The rest of the expenses are small change compared to the above but here they are anyway:

Train tickets in Italy: (19 euro per trip)
I bought train tickets for Civitavecchia to Pisa and Florence to Rome. They were on promotion and were only 19 euro each way. I still need tickets from Pisa to Florence but those weren’t available online yet and can be bought on the spot for less than 9 euros anyway.

Backpack: S$63
I bought a new backpack that was larger than my old one (which was breaking down anyway). I haven’t figured out how to pack neatly so I can stuff more things in the 20L bag.

I will only bring the backpack as my major storage unit. It’s just too difficult to bring too many things. Also, mom’s coming to Turkey too so she can pass me winter clothes for South America.

Feature phone: S$89
My old 3-year-old Nokia broke down last month. I have an iPhone as my smartphone/portable map/Whatsapp device but I really need a feature phone for local SIMs. I bought a new feature phone when I passed one of the phone shops. It has two SIM slots which mean I can use two at a go!

Visa for Sri Lanka S$38.22 (US$30)
I bought this visa before I found out that AirAsia cancelled the KL-Colombo route. At first I thought about giving up Sri Lanka because the alternative flights were too expensive. Luckily, Tiger Air was selling cheaper budget tickets. Even luckier was that the flights were shifted to an earlier time and I will be able to reach in the morning.

I still lack the visa to the United States. I didn’t have time to get them while in Singapore so I plan to apply in South America before my plane leaves for the transit. Even though I will only be transiting to 4 hours, I still need to pay US$160. WTF.

Tag: #YQrtw